Sunday, July 31, 2005

He who pays the piper calls the tune

Jeffrey Toobin's New Yorker article this month is about the effect Roberts' confirmation (which he sees as a given) will have on the Solomon Amendment. As you may remember, that's the law Congress enacted when certain law schools starting barring military recruiters from campus. (I didn't realize it, but the law school's stand didn't have to do with the war in Iraq but, instead, was a gay rights issue. The school's were/are protesting the military's don't ask/don't tell policy, and demanding that gays have full admission into the military.) The Solomon Amendment says that, if schools -- any schools, not just law schools -- bar military recruiters, they'll lose federal funding. Anyway, the Solomon Amendment, after being struck down by an Appellate Judge, is wending its way to the Supreme Court, where Roberts will (probably) have a chance to rule on it.
As is often the case, one thing in the article struck me particularly:

For some of the plaintiffs, the government is acting as a malevolent censor. “Government can’t give you a little bit of money and then tell the whole university how to run,” Kathleen M. Sullivan, a professor and former dean at Stanford Law School, who is preparing an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs, says. “Government can’t have that much leverage. If we lose this case, there is nothing to stop the government from saying it will take away all federal funds if a university engages in stem-cell research, or gives birth control to its students, or performs abortions in its hospital.”

Keep in mind that Stanford is one of the richest universities in America, if not the world. It's the country club school of the Northern California peninsula. But that's not really the point.
The point is why can't government have that much leverage? If schools want government money, they should play by government rules. If they don't want to play by the rules, they should say no to the money. As I titled this post, "He who pays the piper calls the tune."
One of the things that most characterizes the Left, and one of the things that started disgusting me with the Left long before 9/11, is the Left's sense that the causes it cherishes are entitled to money from the government, but that they get to do whatever they want with that money once they get it. Ages ago, New Jersey tried to impose some very logical restrictions on the uses to which welfare money could be put. NOW went ballistic, because the restrictions prevented teenage mothers from having repeat pregnancies. I too went ballistic -- I wrote nasty letters to NOW, and moved one step (nay, 20 steps) further on my road to conservatism.
Message to Professor Sullivan at Stanford: Of course the government can have this kind of power. You can't accept its money, and then refuse to give it speech on your campus. If you want to shut the government down, close your greedy, grasping little hands, and put your own money where your mouth is.